L.K. Wood: As Everyone Should

Published by The Spirit Of Naples and Southwest Florida, Inc.

http://SONStudios.org

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the NKJV—Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Other versions used are

ESV—Scripture taken from the English Standard Version, Copyright © 2001. The ESV and English Standard Version are trademarks of Good News Publishers.

KJV—King James Version. Authorized King James Version.

NLT—Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

TLB—Scripture quotations marked (TLB) are taken from The Living Bible, copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved.

© 2016 Patricia Wood

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

(Applied for)

Rights for publishing this book outside the U.S.A. or in non-English languages are administered by The Spirit Of Naples and Southwest Florida, Inc.

Cover design and interior layout: http://PearCreative.ca

Hardcover: ISBN: 978-0-9970642-0-9

Ebook: ISBN: 978-0-9970642-1-6

Foreword

1.   A Promise to Dad

2.   Life as an Orphan

3.   Time to Run

4.   On My Own

5.   A Safe Place

6.   Hard Work and Billy

7.   Reunited with My Big Sister

8.   A Girl Named Betty

9.   Hitchhiking and Breaking Horses

10. One Step Closer to Freedom

11. My First Business

12. Vaudeville Nights

13. My Undead Mom

14. Detective Work

15. Rendezvous in Chicago

16. A New Family

17. Another Orphanage

18. The Big Decision

19. Mr. Camp’s World

20. In the Army Now

21. Where the Action Is

22. Dancing with Shirley

23. Private Wood, Again

24. Undercover Operation

25. A Dear Lowell Letter

26. Out of the Frying Pan

27. War—Finally, Almost

28. On the India Front

29. Trouble in the Ranks

Family Photo Album

30. Time to Battle

31. Our Assignment

32. Stolen Bullets

33. Over The Hump

34. Private Hasemoto

35. Kunming

36. A Hard Night

37. Shoot to Kill

38. Home and a New Home

39. On Our Way

40. Detour to Chicago

41. A Stolen Nightie

42. Wisdom from the Guv

43. Harry Truman and Red Schoendienst

44. My Own Company

45. As Everyone Should

46. At the Top

47. Business Wife

48. Movers and Shakers

49. Politicians

50. Shangri-La Days

51. The Next Governor

52. Crooks

53. After L.K. Wood

54. Recovery

55. Lots of Houses, But No Home

56. Changing Times

57. Hurt and Healing

58. Forgiveness

59. Family, Finally

60. What’s Most Important

Afterword

Words cannot truly express my heart or feelings for the great man named L.K. Wood. He was my everything and I was blessed to also be his. Our life was not perfect, but at the end of the day we were for each other, loving each other without condition, and living in full devotion to each other. The only real difficulty we ever encountered was the world always trying to dictate what we were supposed to be, what a married couple should look like, or what behavior was acceptable. The world didn’t win with us, though. We believed we were supposed to be together and lived in that joy to the end.

L.K. taught me something new every single day. Whether it was one of his famous diddys, a real life story from his past, or an important life lesson, the offerings he showered onto my life were plenty and they helped me to know that our marriage was a true gift from God. But while both the world and I received his generosity, I was most grateful for one gift in particular: his transparency. My love allowed me to know the wounds of anger and hurt left in the wake of his mother’s abandonment. They were still festering when we set out on our life together. When, in our latter years of marriage, he allowed me to introduce him to the powerful release of forgiveness for that long-ago hurt, I knew I’d experienced my greatest joy as a wife and given him a gift that mattered.

Often, after we’d enjoyed a dinner with friends and L.K. had told a story about teaching Clark Gable how to knife fight in basic training or about going on a blind date with Shirley Temple before shipping off to the war, people would ask L.K. questions. What else did he see over there? How did he go from penniless to real estate mogul? What relationships and learning moments took him from an abandoned child to a man who helped put governors in office and bring The Arch to St. Louis? Often, my love would smile and say, Those stories can be told once I’m dead.

I thought about that in the days after he passed. And, as my heart began to heal, I knew there was one more worthy gift I could give to this man who gave me so much. I could honor his wish to tell his story once he left this earth for Heaven.

My best friend, companion, husband, and love lived an extraordinary life by the raw way he overcame numerous challenges, how he brought the spice of life to others through his humor, and by sharing his knowledge and opportunities with others. He will forever live through those who had the gift of knowing him as Father, Brother, Husband, Grandpa, Great Grandpa, Uncle, Cousin, Business Associate, and, of course, Friend.

It is my great honor now to introduce you to my champion, a man unlike any other, L.K. Wood.

His Loving Wife,

Patty Wood

A PROMISE TO DAD

Mom was dead. Dad told us so. And then, before too long, he died, too. Yet there I sat, years after we put Dad into the ground, aboard a bus headed to Chicago to meet a very alive woman.

My mother.

Alive.

In 1939.

I shook my head and thought back to the phone call that sent our late summer afternoon spiraling into a sea of questions. Had it only been a few days since then?

We were all together when the phone jangled, and as my sister answered it, the noise woke my newborn nephew. My sister spoke a few words; then her face turned white. She handed the receiver to me. I didn’t recognize the voice on the other end of the line, an aunt gone silent more than a decade ago. My mother’s sister.

Lowell, we’re pretty sure that your mother is alive.

My mind instantly flashed further back to life a decade earlier. Dad broke the news then: your mother is gone. We presumed by gone, he meant she had gone to God in heaven above. I was six, Dick three. A year later, Dad was gone too and Dick and I found ourselves in a home for orphans.

I stayed until I’d had enough. One night, I ran off to live with hobos and search for any relatives who might still be alive. Eventually I found my way to my sister’s house and summoned my brother to join us.

She’s living in Chicago. The voice on the phone drew me away from my orphanage memory. I know how you can find her.

My tongue went dry. I couldn’t speak, unusual for my talkative mouth.

This had to be a big mistake. Maybe a con job—some trick to wheedle us out of what little money we had. Could it be real? My sister was too stunned to respond, my brother too young to grasp the gravity of the call. But I had to know. I had to make the two-hundred-mile journey from our small Michigan town to Chicago.

The Greyhound hit a pothole, jarring me back to the present.

A bead of sweat rolled down my neck. In those days, Greyhound buses had no air conditioning. This didn’t present much of a problem on the highway with the windows open and a breeze blowing in. But stopping at what seemed like every little rural community in Eastern Michigan and Northern Illinois left a lot of time spent sitting without air movement as more passengers entered or disembarked—some youngsters, others grandpas and grandmas. After each stop, the bus rumbled on and bumped along pitted roads, quickly filling with the smells of ripe fruit and half-eaten sandwiches that someone else’s mother had made. We sweltered. The closer we got to Chicago, the muggier and more oppressive the air grew.

I couldn’t help thinking, Maybe this woman just happens to have the same name as my mother. Maybe it’s a scam. But what if it’s true? That last question kept me in my seat.

Finally we pulled into the Chicago bus station.

Peeking through a half-opened window, I searched the faces of the people waiting to greet loved ones. A tall, sandy-haired man who wore a suit and bowtie stood at one end of the gaggle. A businessman come to pick up his son or daughter? An older couple stood near the businessman. The husband sported a dark green shirt, and the wife looked lovely in a matching dress that touched the ground as she moved. I had seen European immigrants before and guessed they were German or Polish.

Three people down from the older couple stood a squat, overweight, bowlegged woman attired in a crumpled dress that she must have pulled from a chair next to her bed. She concentrated on the faces at the windows of the bus. Her hair was a mess. And I had no doubt: my mother.

Alive.

Were those tears or small drops of sweat that rolled around her reddened eyes? She wiped the moisture away, straining to get a good look at each passenger exiting the bus.

As the Greyhound’s motor idled, awaiting its getaway, I thought to sit back down and go on to its next destination. But I was already in the aisle, being pushed from behind. Too soon, my turn came to exit and, as I did, I wondered and feared. Is it too late to put the pieces back together? Can we be a family again?

__________

My story began nearly a century ago. Maybe some of the details are not exactly as they happened, but following is what I remember.

On my father’s side, we can loosely trace our roots back to Charlemagne. Yes, the guy who once ruled most of Europe, the king who brought Christianity and goodwill to his people, is in my lineage. I liked learning that part of the story.

My great-great-great something or other grandfather Jonathan Wood was the first to come to America. According to family lore, he sailed across the Atlantic in 1798 and settled in Little Compton, Rhode Island. Many Woods made their homes in that neck of the woods back then, so it’s impossible now to figure out exactly who was who.

The history is even fuzzier on my mother’s side. All I know for sure is that my parents married and bought a small plot of land in upstate New York. Their meager farm lay on the outskirts of a town called Carlton, just a stone’s throw away from Lake Ontario. In those days, the center of town was called Carlton Station. I was born there on May 3, 1924, the fourth of five Wood children.

Lake Ontario is a blustery expanse of water, vulnerable to hard-hitting gales. In winter, cold west winds draw the moisture from the lake and blanket the land on the south and east with snow high enough to lose a horse. On the rare clear day, you can look northward and almost see Canada across the lake.

Today a four-lane parkway begins near Carlton and stretches east along the waterfront toward Rochester. The paved road winds through gorgeous green hills and over blue rivers. But in 1924 those roads were dirt and narrow, and bridges few and far between.

Like my own path.

This path I followed was neither straight nor without serious missteps. Ease never entered into my journey, and I always felt like an underdog. Many choices I wish I could make again. Too many words crossed my lips that I wish I could take back. I made mistakes. I hurt the people closest to me. I hope I helped a few folks too.

A lot of what I remember now seems like a dream; in certain places it played out like a nightmare. But eventually I found peace, more than I believe I deserve. And I was able to, at least in a small way, keep my word to my father. I will tell you about that promise as my story unfolds, but for now know that I carried that commitment with me for my entire life.

__________

It will be helpful for you to know something about my father, the one to whom I made the promise. He was a farmer. So were our neighbors. They talked farming, lived farming and died farming.

In those days, apple orchards stretched as far as the eye could see. There’s even a story about the daughter of a local homesteader who planted the first apple tree in Carlton. It is probably exaggerated, but makes for a good local legend.

I do know that Carlton’s citizens were rugged people who wrested life from the rocky ground below and the unpredictable sky above. My earliest memories are of neighbors like the Dunhams and Swetts who rode up and down on their luck. I also remember how hard work and perseverance stuck to them like the soil they tilled. Although the times were hard, most families had sufficient provision for their needs.

Not so in the Wood household.

It seemed the harder my father worked, the more we fell behind. The more we fell behind, the more determined my mother became—or was it desperation? When I was barely five, she put a short tree branch, line and hook into my hands and sent me to fish along the stream at the south end of our property. Each day she kissed my cheek and said, Lowell, try not to come back without something to put in the frying pan.

Day after day I sat under a hot sun, the waters of the cool blue stream twisting around my feet and coursing over slippery moss-covered rocks. My mother gave me chicken livers to use as bait, hoping to attract catfish. But mostly I came home with bullheads—snarly catfish cousins with sharp spines that, if you weren’t careful, sliced your fingers. I learned to respect the fish, and the hard work it took to secure them. The meat of the bullheads was paltry but still filled empty places in our stomachs.

I had an older brother and two older sisters, but our income was small, and the fishes were few. One by one my older siblings had to leave.

My sister Millie married at an early age and moved to Michigan to help an aunt with household chores—she’s the one who answered the phone on the that fateful day. I can still picture Millie and her new husband, Gordon, rolling out of our driveway on an old Harley-Davidson motorcycle. For some reason a picture of the bike’s teardrop gas tank stuck with me.

My sister Lillian went to live with an uncle who needed her help every minute. She did his housework and cared for his ill wife. I have only the faintest memory of her.

My older brother, Elmer, got a job with a local farmer. The pay was low, and the work was hard. Elmer eventually signed on with Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conversation Corps, a job that paid him enough to live on.

And then—surprise!—after the older children had left home, we got another Wood mouth to feed. My brother Dick was born in 1928. After Dick came into the world, my mother seemed to spend more time away from the house than in it.

Maybe it was the poor quality of soil my father was working, or maybe it was the coldness developing between my father and mother that eventually did us in. Either way, when the Great Depression fell on the world in 1929, our family was pummeled even further down. The bills for seed and fertilizer came due. To make ends meet, we took on a boarder.

Stanley Marks seemed like the perfect fit, at least at first. He was a drifter who had found temporary work in Carlton. Tall, sandy haired, and well built, he baled hay at a neighbor’s farm. The crop had to be taken in before the first snow fell. Stanley needed a place to stay--so he moved in.

Stanley arose and left early each morning returning every afternoon. Dad got up early too, but worked his own land and rarely came in before sundown. This situation often left Stanley in our home when Dad was not. And on some of those afternoons, Stanley sent me to the store in town for treats. I had plenty of time to daydream as the walk took me about half an hour each way.

Sometimes I pretended I was the shortstop for the Yankees. I’d never been to a game, but everyone had heard of Babe Ruth. He played for the Bronx Bombers in those days and hit 714 home runs—a record that lasted until Henry Aaron broke it in 1973. During other walks to the store, I tried to figure out how to catch more fish so all the Woods could eat. A few times I was tempted to pick apples from other farmers’ trees—but I resisted.

Then, just as suddenly as Stanley appeared, he disappeared. Something bad must have happened because our mother was gone too. Dick and I thought she had died. That’s what Dad told us. In hindsight, it was strange, because there was no funeral, and the minister from the small Methodist church never came to our home.

I admit, I cried. Tears helped, but red eyes weren’t going to bring our mother back or put food on our table. And it wasn’t just my stomach that was empty. Even with my limited time on the earth up to that point, I knew I’d lost something and felt the dryness in my spirit left in its absence.

After my mother disappeared, I grew closer to my father. I prepared his food before he left for the fields and I washed the dishes each night. I was a perfectionist even then, so I scrubbed until I got every speck of dirt off every plate and bowl.

One morning when he was about to leave for the fields, Dad said to me, Lowell, you give me hope and a reason to go on. I love you!

I love you too, Dad. Just tell me what you want me to do, and I will!

All he said was, We’re gonna see better days.

Before any better days came, there were lots of worse days. The winter of 1931 saw Dad overworked and always worrying. He became ill with pleurisy. The local doctor heated his chest with hot mustard pads in an effort to dissolve the congestion in his lungs. The burning sensation was supposed to make it easier to breathe, but it didn’t help. Dad’s breathing became more and more painful. The hands that held and protected my brother and me fell limp. They could not shield us anymore.

Between coughs, the last words he whispered to me were, You’re a good boy, Lowell. Take care of your little brother.

Dad’s death was like a limb torn off my body. No child should have to go through such a thing. I pushed against the grief. I gritted my teeth, held back tears, and fought this new calamity. My father had a last request, and I had promised to fulfill it. I had my little brother to care for.

But I had no one to take care of me.

Our brother Elmer came home to take charge of Dad’s funeral. They arranged the coffin in the front parlor of our soon-to-be-vacated home. The once-white walls, now gray, were stripped of any pictures of places that we might have longed to see and of every photo that had ever been taken of the family.

Neighbors came to the house to view Dad’s remains. In the small dark hallway, our friends turned their backs to talk to each other. But we still heard them.

What’s going to happen to these two kids?

Who’s going to pay me for that seed and fertilizer?

Where is the mother?

The house needs to be sold to pay the bills.

The kids need to go to the orphanage.

Dick whispered, What’s that?

I’m not sure what an orphanage is, I answered, But maybe we can get something to eat there.

A young minister from the United Methodist Church joined us in the house. He said a few words about Dad and what a hard worker he had been. He told how Dad had endured and triumphed like Jesus. That is all I can remember. At the time, I had no idea what he was talking about. Yet I listened closely because the minister was a man of God and therefore deserved respect. After speaking, he led us in singing a few hymns. Then he prayed some words I did not understand and left.

I felt crushed and abandoned, as helpless as one of those squirrels in our fields when a strong wind shook their tree down. But, for Dick’s sake, I stayed strong.

Dick asked, Where’s Dad?

He’s gone.

Gone where?

"I dunno. But it’s someplace we can’t go now. We’re gonna have to stay here. But don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. We’re gonna see better days.

LIFE AS AN ORPHAN

The Virgil Bogue Home in Albion, New York, was the best place in the world and the worst place in the world. Elmer brought us there since no one else could keep two young boys. That made it the best place, because we needed some place to stay. Dick was only three, and I had just turned seven.

I’ll come by to see you whenever I’m able, Elmer said.

We wanted to believe him. Oh, how we wanted to believe. We needed to believe—he was our flesh and blood. But deep down, I had a feeling his visits would be few. As we watched Elmer leave, it felt as if we’d said good-bye.

Dick clung to my waist as if to say, You better not leave me too. Stares of the other children settled on us, so I pushed Dick’s arms down, grabbed one of his hands, and marched us through the front entrance.

The Bogue Home quickly turned dreary and foreboding—we immediately felt abandoned. We called it the Bug home. A dull gray adorned the outside. The white paint inside let everyone know this was an institution or jail. Not one picture hung on the walls.

The first week we were there, Dick cried all the time. I kept a tight grip on his hand, comforting him the best I could. I shook all over and wished I had Elmer or my dad to hold my hand. Where was mom when I needed her most?

Despite my pain, I tried to act grown up—I had to—for Dick. Whatever it took, I would do what my father had asked of me. I had made a promise.

Elmer did come to see us, but he couldn’t come often. When he visited, we’d run down the stairs and throw ourselves around him—giving him huge hugs. It felt as if Dad were with us.

You two seem lively. Are they feeding you well?

Elmer, don’t leave us! Please take us with you. We can help you. We don’t eat much.

But each time we begged, Elmer said, I want to, but I can’t. Not yet. I don’t have a place of my own. Maybe later. Now, Lowell, you take care of Dick.

Why did he say that every time?

Dick and I held tightly to Elmer’s arms, and when he got up to leave, we wrapped our legs around his legs. Elmer disentangled himself from us